Mia

Mia is the first cartoon like character I ever created. She was a bit of a challenge as I wanted her to look curvy and stylized but still look in proportion. I wanted to make sure she has a good edge flow and topology, and that she would deform nicely when rigged.

I am very happy with the model and had a great time creating her. I used Maya to model the body & hair, and ZBrush & 3D Coat to sculpt and retopo the face.

Morning Wood

Morning Wood (unfortunate name...I know) was a group projected I worked on in my second year at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment. This was the first group project of the year and although we were unable to complete it and only got two shots out we were rather happy with the end result.

The aim of this project was to integrate a CG element into a live action plate. After deciding on a story we ventured to the Blue Mountains in Sydney, Australia to shoot some footage. This was by far the best day of the year. I really enjoyed finding the perfect tree to have our Tree Imp climb out of.

My role in the project was Producer, Rigger and Title Sequence Designer. I really enjoyed being the producer as I am organised and I have a knack for planning. It was great to be able to use this to our advantage as a group and I really enjoyed applying my graphic design background into the Directors Treatment and the Title Sequence .

Being the rigger was a challenge for me as this was the first rig I have ever created. I found it to be a lot of fun though. Being able to solve any issues that arose really made me feel proud of my work.

It was a shame that we were unable to finish the whole story but it was a great experience and we certainly learnt from our mistakes and applied them in future projects.

Morning Wood

This was a Group Project which required us to integrate a CG element into a Live Action plate.

Morning Wood - Animatic

This is the animatic for the clip Morning Wood.

WSPA

WSPA was a group project which took place at the end of the first year of college at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment.

This particular project was a client project. We were required to find a client and produce some work for them. We were lucky enough to get WSPA as a client, World Society for the Protection of Animals. They presented us with a campaign called The Cram Challenge. The Cram Challenge was a challenge for the public to try and cram as many people in a small space and take a photo. That aim of this was to bring attention to the conditions our livestock endure while being transported.

With this information we came up with the short clip to express a typical cramped situation that the average person can connect with. We used this situation to relate what our livestock put up with all the time.

On this project I had the role of generalist and group representative for the client. I was responsible for keeping the client up to date and relaying the clients feedback back to the group. As well as this I help out in every aspect I could, mainly related to the environment. I modeled and textured the rocks, road and shrubs, and textured the trees. I also helped with the layout of the environment, rendering and sat on with the compositing.

This was a great experience and definitely learn a lot about group dynamics and and pipeline production. Was very enjoyable.

WSPA - Client Project

This was a Group Project which we did a short clip supporting an ad campaign provided by our client, WSPA.

Animatic - WSPA

This is the animatic for the group project WSPA

Fairytale Ending

Fairytale Ending is a short film which I worked on with a group for my final project at Academy of Interactive Entertainment. The story is about an overly eager princess (Cindy) who wants her dreams to come true with a prince charming and about a prince (James) who's priority is to be the perfect and proper prince to impress his father.

My role in this project was Director, Rigger and Render Wrangler. Though due to the enormity of this project I was also Modeling (Princess and Environment assets), Concepting, in charge of Cameras and Layout, helped with Lighting, Shaders and Layout for Crowds, participated in Cloth Simulation and ran around anywhere I was needed.

This project definitely taught me a lot and unfortunately we were unable to complete in the time we were given. The few shots we got out visually looked amazing though we can pick out a few bugs where it is noticeable that we rushed to try and meet our deadline. We ran into a lot of problems and I have learnt a lot from this experience.

I definitely wish I could redo this as I would do a few things differently and simpler.

Please note: I did not do that Matte Painting but I just like it so much that I wanted to show it off.

FTE - Fairytale Ending

These are some of the completed shots for the short film Fairytale Ending. These are just random shots and are not in any particular order.

FTE - storyreel

This is the Storyreel of the original script before we shortened it to attempt to meet the deadline.

FTE - Animation Playblasts

These are the animation playblasts placed together to make the story.

Gertrude

Gertrude is a character I made while following a rigging tutorial on Digital Tutors. I took the mesh they provided and altered the mesh to make a Football player. I sculpted the face and hair myself including some of the assets. I found this rig rather interesting and I would appropriate some of the techniques I was taught but other than that I still prefer the Animator friendly Rigging techniques.

For the facial rig I used Curve-base Rigging where I skin the curves to the face following the contours of muscles and using clusters to control those curves to deform the face. This technique I personally would re-use as it gives the animators a lot of control and if any added control is needed its as easy as fixing the skinning or adding more influence. The beauty of this is when one control is being animated you get a really nice fall-off across the whole curve.

I have sent this character off to a couple of my animation buddies and can hopefully show a couple of animation tests soon.

Enrique

Enrique is a character I created base off a couple tutorials by James Thompson. I modified the mesh provided by the tutorials to make it a little unique. This rig is a cartoon like rig mainly using the ribbon spine.

While following the tutorials I found a couple techniques that I would not repeat. The ribbon spine has been used to make the complete spine of the character which made it rather difficult to combine a facial rig.

For the facial rig I used a method I was familiar with called Curve-Based Rigging. Where you skin a curve to the mesh and by using clusters you can control that curve and get a nice fall-off.

I enjoyed making a snail rather than my usual humanoid characters though I most likely will not repeat this method.

I have sent this rig off to a couple of animators I know and will hopefully get some animation tests back soon to post on here.

Finding Dave

Finding Dave is a still shot I worked on. I was seeing lots of jellyfish renders on the internet and decided to create my own. I wanted to create a magical scene and really capture the beauty and colours of the jellyfish and the ocean.

I used the atmosphere environment settings in Arnold to help set the scene. I used both the Fog and Volumetric Scattering in different passes. This as well as using a Vector Displacement for the ocean, this pretty much made up my whole environment.

My favourite parts of this project were Lighting and Compositing. I really enjoyed trying new things in Nuke as I have only ever known the basics of compositing.

The programs and renderer I used were Maya, Mudbox, 3D Coat, Photoshop, Arnold and Nuke.